


In Memoriam

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [67]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, I know you're gone, you said you're gone, but I can still feel you here."On Memorial Day, Sara goes to visit her son's grave and people are already there.





	

Sara had grown up with Memorial Day as the first holiday after school let out for the summer. It was a time for her family to get together, have a barbecue, and leave some flowers on various’ relatives graves. They could talk and reminisce and share the good memories they had of their loved ones who’d passed on, teach the younger generations about where they’d come from. And then she’d married Jack. Sara’s family wasn’t completely devoid of people who’d served in the Armed Forces - her father and grandfathers had both served in the World Wars - but Jack treated Memorial Day very differently. He wasn’t one for a barbecue. He’d put on his dress blues and head to the cemetery and leave flowers for the servicemen he’d known and lost, send cards to the widows and families of those who he’d failed to bring home when he was in command.  
  
He’d always taken Charlie with him, to teach him how important service to their country was. And he’d tell Charlie stories, too, about the men and women he served with. The funny and strange things they did. The brave things they did.  
  
Charlie had wanted, so badly, to grow up and be just like his father - play baseball and hockey and fly a fighter jet.  
  
Shoot a gun.  
  
After the divorce, after that last mission that just about made Jack crazy, that sent him into retirement, it had taken Sara a couple of years to get back into the swing of things, of Memorial Day as she’d grown up doing it. She hosted barbecues and laid out flowers and reminisced with her family once more. And her reminiscences included Charlie, and she laid flowers on his grave.  
  
Over the past year, things had been shaken up. She’d seen that boy and those strange men at Charlie’s grave, and then she’d seen them again at the grocery store, the boy who could have been Jack as a child, could have been Charlie all grown up, and she’d called Jack, because as painful as their parting had been, she still liked him. Jack was funny and charming and smart and so far away, having been called out of retirement, and now he was a general.  
  
He’d come by the house, and together they’d cleaned out Charlie’s old room, both of them saving some of his possessions for memories, with plans to donate the rest.  
  
Sara hadn’t heard from Jack since, knew he was back in Washington, and it was okay. After that strange incident with the creature who looked like Jack and then Charlie and wanted to find the Stargate, she’d burned with questions, but it was all so long ago, and none of that mattered anymore. She could move on, and finally, so could he.  
  
Still, for Memorial Day, she was going to hold a barbecue, and she was going to reminisce with her relatives - Dad was gone, now - and she was going to leave flowers on the graves of her loved ones.  
  
She walked the familiar path, wildflowers in hand, and saw -  
  
Men. In Air Force dress blues, arrayed at Charlie’s grave. One was in a wheelchair, two were standing. Three other men were with them, all in dark, somber suits. All of them were holding flowers, save the one, who held a baseball.  
  
It took Sara a moment, but she recognized them. The shorter of the soldiers on his feet was the man she saw at the grocery store sometimes. The others sometimes went shopping with him, to his chagrin.  
  
One of the civilian men was - that dark-skinned teenage boy, who’d been at the grocery store sometimes too.  
  
“His middle name was Tyler?” he asked.  
  
The other young man - the one who looked like Jack, could have been Charlie - nodded. “Yes. Charles Tyler O’Neill.”  
  
“So when I -”  
  
“Cam picked you because he loves you. We all love you.”  
  
The man in the wheelchair reached out, squeezed the boy’s hand.  
  
“Why Tyler? For a middle name,” the boy asked.  
  
“Sara’s maiden name. Charles was a name we picked for ourselves. He was going to have my last name, naturally, but we wanted him to have some of Sara’s family name too,” said the young man.  
  
Sara’s throat closed. How did he know that? He’d just played on Charlie’s little league team, right? Only he said _we_ and _my_ as if he were -  
  
“You’d have liked him,” the young man said. “And I think he would have liked you too.” He knelt and placed the baseball at the base of the headstone.

The other men laid out their flowers. The soldier Sara had recognized first - Ethan or Evan - rearranged the flowers more artfully. Then he reached out to that younger man, curled his fingers through his.  
  
“What now?” the boy asked.  
  
“There are some other people we need to pay our respects to,” Ethan-maybe-Evan said.  
  
“Are they buried around here?” the boy asked.  
  
“Some of them.”  
  
“Who are they?”  
  
“They were on my mining team. They weren’t as lucky as me.”  
  
“But we’re out of flowers.”  
  
The older civilian man, with the thinning hair and bright blue eyes, said, “We’re not. Evan would never let that happen.”  
  
“We just need to swing back by the car and grab them,” Evan said.  
  
As one, the men turned. They paused when they saw Sara.  
  
The man in the wheelchair wore a Medal of Honor around his neck. All of the men in dress blues wore bronze oak leaves.  
  
“Hello again, Mrs. O’Neill,” the younger civilian man said politely.  
  
She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She had a thousand questions she wanted to ask, but -  
  
A shrill ringing broke the silence.  
  
The young man fumbled in his pocket.  
  
“I told you to turn that off,” Evan hissed.  
  
“It’s Carter.” The man answered it. “Hello?” His expression turned grim. “Thank you for telling me. Pass my - well, you can’t really do that, can you? Yes, I’ll tell the others.”  
  
“JD?” the man in the wheelchair asked cautiously.  
  
“General Hammond passed away last night. Heart attack. Peaceful, mostly. In his sleep. Funeral will be in Arlington in three days.” JD switched off his cell phone and pocketed it.  
  
“Who’s General Hammond?” the boy asked.  
  
“He was my CO,” Evan said. “And Cam’s. And - Uncle Jack’s.”  
  
“He commanded the base when I first started with the program, too,” the older civilian man said.  
  
“Arlington.” JD glanced at the man in the wheelchair. “Road trip?”  
  
The man shrugged. “That’s what all families do in the summer, right?”  
  
The boy frowned. “Aren’t you teaching summer school?”  
  
“Principal Connors will understand,” JD said. He glanced at Sara again. “Let’s move along, give Mrs. O’Neill her privacy.”  
  
All of the men nodded respectfully at her as they passed. JD caught her gaze and held it, and something inside her fractured. Every time she saw his face, she was forcefully reminded of the men in her life she had loved and lost - her son, her husband. Something in his eyes this time, something ageless and sad, reminded her of her father.  
  
Sara went and knelt beside Charlie’s grave, laid her flowers with the ones the men had left. She stared at his headstone, at the little dash between birth date and death date that was only eight years, not nearly enough. The universe was so unfair, so -  
  
And she realized. The baseball JD had left. It wasn’t a brand new baseball, like he usually left. It was the baseball from Charlie’s room. The one Sara had given to Jack. Why had Jack given it to JD?  
  
Why had JD said _we_ and _my_ as if he’d been Charlie’s father, Sara’s husband once upon a time?  
  
Sara gazed at Charlie’s headstone, at _beloved son_ and thought, _I know you’re gone, you said you’re gone, but I can still feel you here._  
  
She stood up and dusted herself off, headed back to her car. As she walked, she fished her cell phone out of her pocket, and she dialed a number she’d thought she’d never use again.  
  
“Jack, it’s Sara. I signed an NDA years and years ago, and I never pressed the issue, but it’s time. I need answers. Tell me about Charlie and JD and the Stargate.”


End file.
